


Meanwhile, On The Other Side of the Globe...

by Telaryn



Series: Budapest Revisited [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Fugitives, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), I Don't Even Know, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), SHIELD, Spies & Secret Agents, Trust, Trust Issues, Where Was Clint Barton During Captain America 2?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 14:54:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1903212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a solo mission deep in Tibet, Clint finally surfaces just in time to see the world he's always known completely unravel.  His first thought is to get to Natasha, but heading towards a rendezvous unknowingly brings him into the heart of HYDRA and their plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meanwhile, On The Other Side of the Globe...

**Author's Note:**

> My take on the "where the hell was Clint during the events of Winter Soldier" speculation.

Clint had been holed up at a SHIELD substation in Southern Tibet when the world went to hell. “You’ve worked with the Captain,” one of the two technicians assigned to man the station had said, spinning around in his chair to fix his eyes on Barton. “What do you think? Bullshit or has he really gone dark-side?”

“Bullshit,” Clint said without a second’s hesitation, thinking that if either of the two had ever spent even a moment in Steve Rogers’ presence they wouldn’t dare ask the question. _Something’s wrong about this,_ he thought, just as the burner phone in his pocket vibrated for his attention.

 _And you’re in the thick of it, aren’t you?_ he thought, checking the text from Natasha. _Time to rabbit,_ it said, confirming his own worst suspicions. _Watch for my signal. Trust no one._

Clint was slipping the phone back into his pocket, already calculating how long it would take to put his kit back together and hit the road when the other tech swore violently. “What is it?” his partner asked.

The man stepped back so Clint and the other technician could see. _Director Fury…deceased._ The two techs began to babble excitedly at each other; for his part, Clint didn’t wait long enough to read the rest of the report. Nick Fury dead, Captain America a fugitive and Natasha telling him to run? He’d definitely overstayed his welcome.

Fortunately packing his kit was a quick affair; years of experience kept him from spreading out too much when he was in a strange location. Unfortunately it wasn’t fast enough for the older of the two technicians to get over his shock and dismay and investigate what Clint was up to. “You heading out?” he asked, leaning casually against the door jamb.

Clint nodded without missing a beat. “Recall order’s going to be coming any second. Ten years and it’s never done me any good to wait.” The other man rolled his eyes in sympathy.

“Probably good the weather never cleared,” he said. “It’s a lot easier getting evac’d from here than from another thousand feet up in the clouds.” He flinched, startled by a faint yet sharp buzz of sound. Pulling out his phone, he checked the message.

 _Okay, this looks bad,_ Clint thought, slipping a hand into his duffel and snapping open the restraining strap on his holstered service weapon. The other man’s expression darkened with a mixture of determination and fear as he read whatever message had been sent. Clint drew and aimed his weapon just as the tech looked up at him again. “You know my rep,” he said calmly, sighting down his arm to the kill spot between the man’s eyes. “Whatever orders you just got on that thing, are they worth your life?”

There was a long moment of silence before the man swore and put up his hands. “All you need to do,” Clint said, pulling his duffel closed and slinging the bag over his shoulder, “is roll your clock back five minutes. You got the orders, but I was already gone. No harm, no foul, we all keep on breathing.”  
********************  
Every fiber of his being was screaming for him to raise the alarm, get in touch with the others – find out what was really going on – but Clint knew his odds were going to improve dramatically if he could find a safe place to go to ground. _Nat’s working with Cap,_ he thought, discarding the two of them immediately as possible sources of aid and information. He knew his partner well enough to understand that if Natasha had been in a position to help him he would have had more from her than the short text…and the spotlight on Cap right now was brighter than anything he wanted aimed in his direction.

 _”It’s best for all concerned if you spend a little time under the radar.”_ After telling him that Natasha was going to be temporarily reassigned to work with Captain America, it was Fury’s diplomatic way of letting Clint know that no one else trusted him enough to work with him.

 _”It’ll pass.”_ Nat had tried to reassure him back in his quarters half an hour later as he packed. _”Trust me – let Fury’s PR fairies work their magic and in six months even our own people won’t remember anything but New York.”_ Clint hadn’t been able to tell her then that it was the idea of being apart from her for another six months that had him twisted up inside. He still wasn’t in the right head space to deal with the crippling load of guilt and confusion Loki had left him with.

Things made sense when Natasha was around. More importantly he could trust himself again. She was his safety net – if the worst happened, he knew she would either bring him home or put him down before any more innocents died at his hands.

Twenty miles out from the substation he pulled his snowmobile into a nearby stand of trees and cut the engine. Stark Industries was in the process of converting SHIELD’s motor pool to clean energy, and the snowmobiles were some of the earliest successful result. Clint hadn’t thought about what it would mean having one of the vehicles at his disposal until he started trying to work out what his next moves were going to be. The idea that he wouldn’t have to expose himself trying to acquire something as basic as fuel was suddenly very attractive.

 _Stark…_ He’d dismissed the millionaire playboy out of hand before – if you wanted to avoid the spotlight it was usually smart to avoid Tony as well. _Simple physics though,_ he reminded himself. _Brightest spotlights throw the longest shadows._ And if there was anyone in his sphere of people who would know what was going on and what it meant, it was Tony Stark.

Pulling out the phone Tony had given him to use for Avengers business, Clint raised it to his lips. “Call Tony Stark.”

He’d never used the phone before, but even so he was surprised at how long it took for him to get an answer. When he did though, it staggered Clint at just how relieved he was to hear a familiar voice. “Legolas? Damn – we were just talking about you! Where the hell…Tibet? What the hell are you doing in Tibet?”

Clint grinned in spite of himself. “Staying about half a step ahead of my own people, who for some reason want to take me in. What do you know?”

As he’d suspected, Tony knew as much as Clint suspected anyone did short of Fury himself, and Fury was dead. “Hill’s agreed to talk to Congress because she’s clearly got some residual brain damage,” he added after filling Clint in on the admittedly bleak state of things, “but otherwise my lawyers are doing a pretty fair job of keeping the dogs at bay. If you’re ready to come in from the cold, the blanket’s big enough to cover you too.”

“Have you heard from Nat?” The question was all he could think of to give himself time to think. He wasn’t a smooth talker – he didn’t have the words to effectively tell Tony how much it meant that Stark had offered him shelter without hesitation, reservation or conditions. _Especially considering what we’re up against._

“Not personally,” Tony admitted. “Last reliable sighting after she told Congress off had her going somewhere to ‘start over’. Hill tells me she burned every alias she had, so make of that what you will.” He paused. “Keep in touch, okay? You need _anything_ , send up a flare and one of us will answer. You have my word.”  
***********************  
It took about three days for Clint to start questioning his decision not to take Tony up on his offer. As hard as the job could be sometimes, he’d gotten spoiled by the idea that support, transport, or extraction was never more than a handful of days away. And even though he had a reasonable idea where Natasha had gone it wasn’t until he was deep in southern Germany before he found an internet café capable of sending the kind of flare he needed to verify his suspicions.

It would be at least twenty-four hours before he could expect any kind of contact, but Clint hadn’t been at a public computer in weeks – certainly not since everything he knew and trusted had collapsed beyond repair. The idea of seeing what had happened through the perspective of the civilian world was too tempting to resist.

Half an hour later, and his mind was spinning. So much had collapsed so quickly – and his heart actually ached with pride for how Natasha had handled things. She had been raised from girl-hood to be a creature of the shadows – secrets and lies her stock in trade. This much naked truth must have been a terrifying step for her to take, but there was no better way to make the point that had to be made.

Of course none of it answered the all-important question: what next? The idea that HYRDRA had been rooted like a cancer in SHIELD’s heart since the beginning cast doubt on whether anything of the organization that had given Clint a home and purpose could be saved. _Cap certainly doesn’t think so._ And if the man whose life and philosophies had inspired the founding of SHIELD in the first place was arguing for the dead to stay dead, who was going to stand against him?

 _You need to get moving._ He smiled slightly, enjoying the fact that his subconscious once again sounded like Nat. Logging out of his session, he gathered up the few things he’d brought in with him and slid off the stool.

Movement at the entrance to the café caught his eye. Three men in black leather that couldn’t have screamed “bad news” more clearly if it had been spelled out over their heads in multi-colored neon letters three feet high. _Damn,_ he thought, slipped on his shades and heading for the rear entrance.

“Sloppy,” he breathed, moving through the stockroom as quickly as he could, scanning the area for a door that would let him out of the building. There was nowhere in the city he could reliably go to ground, and if SHIELD or HYDRA had tracked him this closely he was likely going to have to abandon any hope of waiting around to connect with Nat.

 _At least she’ll know you’re trying to make contact,_ he thought, adrenaline sparking through his system as he spotted the door to the outside. Hip-checking the panic hardware, he was momentarily blinded by the unexpected brightness.

It was enough to tip whatever advantage he might have had in favor of the two thugs that grabbed him. Clint tensed, ready to fight them both, but his vision was suddenly filled with a terrifyingly familiar blue glow. “I would cooperate if I were you, Herr Barton,” a heavily accented voice said.

Panic overwhelmed Clint, but he stopped fighting immediately – giving his eyes time to adjust to the truth of the scene in front of him. “We already know that you are susceptible to the staff’s influence,” the man holding the essence of Clint’s nightmares said when he realized he had the archer’s full attention. “We don’t want to rob you of your autonomy, but you have valuable information that could help us further our understanding of this device.”

The phrase _fight us and we will happily turn you into our brainless butt monkey_ was never actually spoken out loud, but Clint understood perfectly what he was facing if he couldn’t guarantee his escape.

“Do you surrender?” the man holding the staff asked, raising it again. Clint couldn’t help it – his eyes were drawn inexorably back to that cold, blue glow.

 _Nat…help me…_ He had his knives, and if he could make it back to the snowmobile he had the extra advantage of his bow and arrows. The only question mark was whether he could stay out of reach of the staff long enough to get away.

 _Knives are good for other things too…_ He smiled ruefully, hearing Nat’s voice in his head again. They knew the kind of destruction he was capable of under the staff’s influence. He had already extracted a promise from Nat that she would do whatever she could to keep that devastation from being unleashed again.

“Do you surrender?”

It was time for Clint to step up and do whatever he had to do to take responsibility for his own future. “I pass,” he said, locking eyes for a moment with the man standing opposite him. Then, bending and twisting, he pulled free of the two men holding him and began to run.

 _One more time,_ he prayed, skirting around piles of rotting garbage and debris as he broke for freedom. _Let me see her just one more time._ Grabbing for a fire escape ladder, he pulled himself up and began scrambling towards the roof. Height tipped the advantage back in his direction, and if things ended up going entirely pear shaped, well…

…knives weren’t the only thing that could be turned to take him out of play.


End file.
